Ireland’s Troubled Peace

FORTY years ago this Saturday, three no-warning bombs ripped through Dublin. Less than an hour later, another bomb shattered the rural quiet of the town of Monaghan. In all, 33 people were killed and more than 300 injured. In Dublin, sheets of newspaper were laid over the dismembered bodies to hide them from view. The headlines soaked up the blood: the news in advance.

There would be more bloody headlines; over the next 24 years, 3,600 people would lose their lives in what have euphemistically been called the Irish “Troubles.”

The Troubles ended with the historic peace accords of 1998, which have held, more or less, since then. If the Irish peace process was once a toddler, it is now nearing the age where it must ready itself for university, or a job, or perhaps, most chillingly, the unemployment line.

And yet we can’t quite get away from the past, and the reminder that however mature the peace, it is always at risk of faltering, or of falling apart. Justice can be parlayed into revenge.

Just two weeks ago the president of the Irish nationalist Sinn Fein party, Gerry Adams, was arrested and interrogated for four days about the kidnapping and murder of Jean McConville, a mother of 10 who disappeared over 40 years ago. Her body was found on a windswept beach 11 years ago, a bullet hole in the back of the skull.

On Belfast’s nationalist Falls Road, a freshly painted mural of Mr. Adams that read “Peacemaker, Leader, Visionary” appeared on a wall, while across town Mervyn Gibson, the chaplain for the Protestant Orange Order said: “Sadly, it’s not a memorial mural.”

Irish nationalists saw the arrest as an exercise in public humiliation in the run-up to local and European elections. On the other hand, pro-British loyalists were incensed that while Mr. Adams was brought in for questioning, over the years the British government had written 200 letters to fugitives suspected of membership in the Irish Republican Army, saying that there would be no prosecutions.

Meanwhile the atmosphere between leaders inside the Northern Ireland power-sharing executive branch has turned distinctly sour, with the Unionist first minister, Peter Robinson, and the deputy first minister, Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein, trading verbal jabs of “cowardice” and resignation threats over attacks by suspected paramilitary loyalists in Belfast. And there is a sense on both sides that the British government in particular has walked away, furtively, unwilling to look back.

The peace may be holding, but the process is faltering. Just five months ago, the political parties failed to agree on proposals put forward by Richard N. Haass, an American envoy to the peace process. The most notable obstacles were the matter of flags, parades and how to “contend” with the past, namely through a “historical investigations unit” to carry out inquiries into Troubles-related killings.

What Mr. Haass left behind was a country distinctly unsure of itself. Investment in Northern Ireland has soared in recent years. A sense of color and charm has seeped into the streets. Checkpoints have disappeared. Festivals abound. Sixteen years of peace have meant that a whole generation has grown up without the daily litany of violence.

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At the same time, many Catholics and Protestants live in walled-off mini-citadels and their children go to separate schools. A rash of xenophobic attacks against Eastern Europeans have occurred in Belfast, with “Locals Only” scrawled on wooden panels placed over shattered windows.

And small eruptions of violence hit regularly; virtually every year the failure to agree on parade marching routes and the politics of flags serves up yet another reason for the Molotov cocktails to fly. It’s a small sky over Northern Ireland, but there’s a lot of smoke.

The people of Ireland and Britain still desperately want the peace to continue. It’s one of the few things that we have excelled at in recent years. It is a moral commodity. We have put a lot of energy into it. It makes us look good.

If it falters, it will be a disaster not only for us but for the rest of the world. Peace is not a local thing. That’s what makes it superior to war. War stays where war is. Peace belongs elsewhere, as well as at home. That’s part of its muscle. The presence of peace in Ireland is a lifeline, however tentative, to Syria, to Ukraine, to Colombia.

But the sense of exhaustion in Northern Ireland is a self-perpetuating time bomb. This is not just petty political squabbling. Peace — especially at the delicate age of 16 — can have an ego. It can turn off its calculating mind and fall into the dark pit of being satisfied with itself. Forging a continuing peace process means understanding that there are always going to be several viable truths. The peacemaker — as Senator George J. Mitchell, who negotiated the peace, learned in 1998 — must show the tenacity of a fanatic.

It is, of course, naïve to expect total reconciliation. Some grievances are so deep that the people who suffered them will never be satisfied. But the point is not satisfaction — the point is that the present is superior to the past, and it has to be cultivated as such.

Despite the fact that the Obama administration has not appointed an ambassador to Ireland for a year and a half (the longest period that America has not had a top diplomat in Dublin), the White House is still vital to preserving and re-energizing the peace.

Once upon a time, there were bullets in the back of the head. There were car bombs along South Leinster Street. There were young girls getting tarred and feathered in the flatlands of Belfast. That’s not happening anymore. But just because it’s not happening now, doesn’t mean it will not happen again. To lose the process now would be an international crime that reaches backward and forward both.

Colum McCann is the author of the novel “TransAtlantic” and a co-founder of Narrative 4, a global story exchange project.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on May 16, 2014, on Page A27 of the New York edition with the headline: Ireland’s Troubled Peace. Today's Paper|Subscribe